The LOx MiniTorpedo is about 2" wide and 3' long; the head contains enough high-explosives to catastrophically breach the pipe, while the body is simply a sheathed 2" cylinder of liquid Oxygen. The rear portion is a rocket nozzle.
The nosecone is tough enough to pierce its way through encounters with clathrates; and projections (fins) extend from the body, touching the sides, to keep it centered in the pipeline
The torp emits a homing signal that the surface operator can use to calculate distance. The charge is remotely detonated at what somebody else can calculate as the best depth below the ocean floor; the pipeline itself is 5 miles long.
(I've given up calculating oil velocity since the reported flow numbers change each day, but say 20mph for ballpark)
(the post relates to the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010)-- FlyingToaster, Jul 07 2010 Ram accelerator https://en.wikipedi...iki/Ram_acceleratorWhat [Custardguts] mentioned. [notexactly, Jan 14 2016] Why not just drop a shipping container full of dynamite on the thing? If that is the sort of thing we are doing.-- bungston, Jul 07 2010 because it's really difficult to get a shipping container a few miles through a 6" pipe. :) [post edited]-- FlyingToaster, Jul 07 2010 Just want to confirm - are you saying to use the LOx to combine with oil in the pipe in a confined-ram-jet type arrangement to drive the torpedo down the pipe?
If so, that's pretty clever. Shape the exterior of the torpedo such that releasing oxygen burns the oil and produces thrust. With a given ID of the pipe you're shooting down, shouldn't be impossible to make this work....
Whether it'll seal the leak, not so sure.-- Custardguts, Jul 07 2010 I think it's worth it for the pyrotechnics (which sadly nobody would see) even if it doesn't seal the well. But mostly we'd be trying to break the nice round forces-evenly-spaced-out pipe and let the surrounding strata squish it.
//ramjet// yes, thankyou for clarifying that. (The "nozzle" in the post was an afterthought: originally I was just gonna spray LOx out the back undirected)-- FlyingToaster, Jul 08 2010 Reminds me of some of the high velocity gun ideas I've read about. There's one idea where an explosive gas mix is in a tube, through which is fired a projectile. The projectile is shaped so it compresses the gas as it passes thruogh the tube, and the gas compression-ignites as it passes a rib that runs around the projectile. The shape of the projectile tail is such that the expanding "exhaust" pushes on the projectile providing thrust. The design is really critical in terms of velocity, gas mix, shape, etc.
This idea is much simpler and probably more robust.
See, now I want to vent some of the combustion gasses forward and make this thing supercavitating. Now that would be 1/2 baked.-- Custardguts, Jul 08 2010 Nice thought, [Custardguts]. Tiny bubbles of O2 released at the nose, cling to the skin all the way back to the tail where they - and the oil froth thus created - enter the combustion chamber through a slit in the body.-- BunsenHoneydew, Jul 10 2010 doesn't LOx spontaneously combust with oil ?-- FlyingToaster, Jul 10 2010 no, [FlyingToaster], it goes well with cream cheese and a few capers, though.-- Cedar Park, Jul 11 2010 //supercavitating// a long spike through which... wait... how's supercavitation supposed to work in a non-compressible liquid in an enclosed space ?-- FlyingToaster, Jul 11 2010 random, halfbakery